Obama’s “Enforcement Discretion”

In the wake of the disastrous Obamacare rollout, and the complete exposure of the President as a fraud, the White House has announced an answer to all of the people who are having their health insurance cancelled.

He has announced that he is going to give insurers the “option” of cancelling those plans or not. He is doing so by allowing state health insurance commissioners to decide for themselves if they allow these plans to continue. In other words, each state may be different. The added caveat is that this extension will only be good for one year. Then we are right back where we are right now.

That’s not a solution.

Since people will have to pay more while receiving less coverage (or coverage they don’t want), how much you want to bet that most of these plans still get cancelled, even if the states let them continue?

It isn’t as simple as that, however.

Along with this decree comes the question on whether or not the President has the authority to change a law by fiat. He has already been granting exemptions and amnesty to big corporate donors and many of the unions out there. The White House is claiming that they have the authority to do so, because it is up to them to enforce it, suggesting that if they choose not to, they don’t have to.

Article II, section 3 of the Constitution disagrees with the idea of “enforcement discretion”:

…he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed…

This president has used executive orders like he has the ability to make law with them. He has, in essence, created his own amnesty program through the use of Executive Orders.

Executive orders are orders to different departments within his administration. They are not for writing law. If the president were to write an executive order saying that all men over the age of 40 must wear tu-tu’s on every third Thursday of the month or face a fine, it would not be enforcable, because it is not a law.

The Affordable Care Act specifically sets out the rules, and Obama, nor his administration can change them without referring it back to Congress.

It is Congress that creates the legislation. They argue over it and vote on it, and if it passes, it is sent to the president. The president can either sign it or veto it. Nothing in the Constitution says he can change it. He can, however, send a message to Congress and say “this is what I would like to see in it.”